Red
by pure-class-princess
Summary: One-shot: a missing part of the Black Widow/ Loki interrogation, with the thoughts of Natasha. Rated T just to be safe, themes of self harm and suicide.


**Think about the Loki/ Black Widow 'interrogation' scene, I'm sure there could be a bit in the middle we missed out. Just imagining what that might have been...**

"Your ledger is dripping," sneered Loki, "and you know that it's not mostly the blood of your victims, is it?"

Natasha showed no outward sign of emotion, and she didn't need to put on the mask for it was securely in place; she needn't try not to show any emotion because, as the Black Widow, she had none. There was no feeling but if there was it was hidden anyway: the purchase of this façade a small price to pay in exchange for the power it brought her, the total control she desired. Even when that price was her soul, and her heart.

Soulless.

Heartless.

Yet blood still pumped through her veins: she knew she was not entitled to this privilege. After regaining some morality she'd tried to take her life more than once, to no avail. Ironically, the only person she could not kill was herself, her body would not betray itself - but it would betray her mind.

Those were the first times she had self-harmed, but Loki was right; there were many others.

"Yes," the god glowered when she did nothing, "put up your shield, Natalia, I can see right through it."

"I have no shield." She replied factually, monotonously.

Loki smirked, "Ah, yes. You needn't. You have nothing to hide, and no need to want protection. But you have a sword. An attack, but no defence. You don't care for your own safety." Then he smiled an awkward grimace at her, attempting to look comforting though it was anything but. "Why?"

She frowned deeper, pushing her lips out a bit as the corners drew in and down, mind working over how many ways she could enjoy torturing this monster, _and then myself_, her thoughts added without asking her first. She then grinned; with betrayal of the mind and body she was most likely certifiably insane. Loki copied the grin.

"You needn't tell me: I already know. Barton's mind is less protected than yours. True, he is only focused on one thing at once - yet that thing entirely. It only required... minimal... stimulation for him to spill all about you."

She let him talk, if she knew anything about egotistical maniacs it was that if you let them talk, let them try and get to you without argument, they would slip up.

Arrogance.

Pride.

But they had nothing to be proud of, and many of them knew that. The blood collected from these broken minds did not drench her ledger, because she was serving them. Helping them. Those murders could not be morally counted as evil and so, if anything, cleaned her ledger, smearing some blood off as they escaped to whatever afterlife waited, willingly trading life even for the deepest pit of Hell. She had no pride, but no regret. She was amending for her actions, knowing it would take her whole life. Like Barton, even when she was under some sort of mind control, she blamed herself. She even included the deaths of people which she didn't kill herself, but which she didn't prevent the death of.

"You, oh murderous spider," Loki continued, "he revealed all. You certainly made an impression." They both knew what he was implying, and they both knew it was not true, but they both knew that Barton wanted it to be true. Loki, the bastard, would have used that to his advantage, no doubt. They were obviously on the same wavelength as he pleasantly smirked while she sickeningly grimaced. They were very similar, no doubt, almost identical, but that was their difference: no-one was expendable to her any more.

"Yes, most of that blood staining your ledger is your own. And you have doubts yourself if that can ever be scrubbed away." He smiled, knowing he had hit it, and knowing she couldn't know how. Barton didn't know that, she didn't even trust her shrink with that. If anyone else knew that the only constant thought she had was of elaborate methods of suicide, going back to Stalingrad and finding some peaceful escape, she'd probably be locked up. Left to fester with her thoughts. How can whoever prescribes these treatments think they are in any way helpful? The person would just become madder and madder until they died, more a waste of life than allowing it to be taken.

"Knowing full well you don't deserve to have your life ended, knowing you must live through this torture - and indefinitely at that - you punish yourself. Atop the blood you slave to mop up as you force yourself to labour through cleaning collateral damage, you add equal amounts of your own.

"Every time you believe you have pursued something immoral; and every time you are not perfect, you cut away at all your imperfections with your misery - and pleasurably you do so, I know, my little ballerina."

The words rolled off his silver tongue like velvet, but they were not lies. That final endearment, a part of herself from which she had been detached from for so long, finally broke her. Natalia cried, she wept for all the lives she had taken when she should not've, and all the lives she had not taken when she should've. Blood fell from her eyes because she was not worthy of the water which gave life. The blood fell, dripping endlessly onto her soaked ledger and she knew then that all she could hope for was that one day, and she would toil until then to help even when she could tell it would be no use, the blood she had collected would destroy the ledger she had given herself, dampening every fibre until it slowly became a pool of nothing. A small pool of her own blood; because then, she realised, she had made her ledger strong, it was the only measure of her life, and she would go with it. She knew it could never be cleaned because, in the end, it would hold, alone, the blood spilt as she died. She did not flinch, she smiled. She would be happy with that, and would pirouette into Hell with a smile on her face, ready to perform again. It was a ne'er-ending circle, but not a painful one. It is what she deserved, and she knew from experience that this should be fulfilled.

The Black Widow did not cry. She listened to the god's words and almost felt sorry for the woman inside, coming to terms with the existence she had accepted when she was made.

For now, Natalia and the Black Widow would work in harmony to try and improve the abysmal world in which they resided. Neither had ambition, pride, feeling. On that day they had become one; but Natasha knew that when she died, she would die Natalia Alianovna Romanova, be buried in a family grave in Stalingrad, and rest in peace.

"I will make sure my daughter welcomes you with open arms, Natalia."


End file.
